In the Christian Bible, there’s a book called Leviticus which lists a whole bunch of ancient rules about how to burn offerings, purify your tabernacle and handle vaginal discharge (yes, really). As a warning for those who break the rules, God literally sets two young priests on fire for lighting incense the wrong way — rules are rules, boys.

Anyway, one of the rules about sex (contained in Leviticus 18:23) states, “Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is perversion.”

So basically, because The Shape of Water is about a mute woman who falls in love with an amphibian-based lifeform that’s part merman, part Creature from the Black Lagoon. The entire movie is really a metaphor for loving those who are different from us, but for Swanson, the film is literally about a woman who commits the unholy perversion of fucking a fish.

Thus, his “sermon” this morning about the wages of fish-fucking:

The Academy Award ceremonies this week provided the best film and best director Oscar to a violation of the worst possible sexual sin mentioned in Leviticus chapter 18…. This was another milestone in the moral degradation of Hollywood and the nation itself. What it did was it presented the ultimate sexual depravity … as a tender and romantic and a beautiful thing.

He then speaks of an Old Testament nation that “vomited its people out … because they practiced these abominable practices.” This is wacky Bible-speak for “God will smite you for having sex with fish.”